


The Book of You and I

by StellaLux



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, superhero au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-25
Updated: 2013-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-21 06:59:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/897242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StellaLux/pseuds/StellaLux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Zayn finally finds his destined soul mate in Niall, he thinks the universe is finally giving him a break. But he was wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue 1: Niall

The truth is, Niall remembers everything.

He’s not a trashy cliché blockbuster where the protagonist claims to not understand how he got to a particular stage of his life. In his story, he’s still not quite sure whether or not he’s the protagonist anyway.

He’s also not like Josh, who can’t remember anything prior to being taken into the guild even after frustrating and somewhat futile attempts to do so.

Niall remembers that time in first grade when John Fitzpatrick pushed him into the mud on picture day. He remembers crying in his mother’s arms later in the afternoon because the rest of the kids had laughed at him, remembers how warm she always was, the scent of her floral perfume and how it mixed with the savory aroma of whatever she was cooking at the time. He remembers her loving him. Unconditionally, wholly, devotionally.

He remembers how rough his father’s hands were on his shoulders when he finally managed to dribble a ball past his older brother, skin crinkled around blue eyes, lighthearted laughter that filled Niall up the brim with self-pride at accomplishing something that made his father look like that. He also remembers his brother, eyes darker like they’re mother’s, running over and playfully ruffling his hair in congratulations. 

But the guild isn’t a place for memories that are warm like an old photograph; worn by time, fuzzy at the edges and creased from picking up that moment and setting it back down. It’s not a place for sunny liquid nostalgia dripping into your thoughts and soaking your heart with fondness.

Really, only two memories from Niall’s previous civilian life are deemed important to where he is today.

In the fundamental world of opposites, there is ice and there is fire. 

His childhood was always tinged in the cold, frozen temperatures sank through his clothing and caressed his skin in the most intimate of ways until he could feel the cold all the way down to his bones. But he never shivered; it was   
never harmful to him. It was only ever a blessing, a familiarity, a rightness associated with being cold. And that was even before he had learned he could control it. 

Fire is a different story. Fire to Niall is memories of a night where his childhood was sucked into the darkness of the night. It’s waking up in his room feeling far too hot, hot, hot to the sound of screams that paralyzed him with fear and uncertainty. It’s running to his bedroom door and trying to open it without burning himself on the door handle only for it to be pushed open, hands around his small eight year old arms and waking up later in a room with people he didn’t know telling him his family was dead and that he was an orphan of the Guild now. It was a bleak day in August, with people wearing black and three slabs of stone standing in for his family. 

So he knows why he’s here. He knows the steps and events that have led him to having been trained for years to be someone he’s not, to obey orders that Niall really wishes weren’t directed to him, and to fight for a cause he wants absolutely nothing to do with.

But really, when Josh comes to him with a folder that probably contains they’re new mission and a message that the boss wants to speak with him, his memories don’t change a thing. 

They just make everything that much harder.


	2. Prologue #2: Zayn

In Zayn’s mind there are blue eyes. 

Ever since he could form words and walk in a straight line, he’s seen them. They float through his dreams, or his daydreams as it sometimes happens, and even though they’re sometimes different shades, he knows it’s the same pair every time. 

Zayn sees them for the first time at five years old. It was the first day of school, he made a friend, Danny, and overall it was a very successful day. He remembers that his mother walked him home that day instead of driving. He felt the wind flow over his skin as softly as water and was hit by the sudden desire to follow it up into the sky as it left him. That night he dreams of sky blue eyes, clear and deep and so warm that he wants nothing more than to be wrapped in that gaze forever. 

At ten, Zayn flies for the first time. It’s an accident more than anything. He and Danny are wrestling in his tree house that’s barely supported by the decaying old tree in his back yard. Zayn usually wins, he’s stronger than Danny despite still being the smallest between the two of them, his first growth spurt hasn’t quite kicked in yet. But this time Zayn feels hands pushing at his torso, feels the roughness of the wooden floor beneath his shoulder blades as he rolls, and feels the sudden fall out after a resounding crack fills the air. His head is down and he can see the cracked branch and part of the wooden floor falling beneath him and he knows he’s going to follow. Tucking his arms around his torso to protect his ribs, Zayn braces himself for the fall but then he feels the gravity dragging him down turn off. His eyes remain closed for a while, a breeze is ruffling his hair, sun warm on his skin, and he feels so light, feels like he’s looking into a pair of blue eyes. After he and Danny have experimented with Zayn’s new ability well into the night and agreed never to tell a soul about what just happened, he slips into bed and the shade of blue he dreams of this time remind Zayn of the trip he took with his family to the ocean, deep navy with rushes of aqua, golden flecks like the sun reflecting off of the water. 

He’s thirteen and things are tense between Zayn and his parents. He feels a bit like a cliché when he claims that his parents don’t understand him but there is nothing closer to the truth. He’s a young teenager, he suspects that he’s bisexual, and if that wasn’t enough, he can fly and crack a tree branch the size of his leg in half with his bare hands. So, yeah, understanding in his family is pretty low. His sisters love him, but his parents begin to progressively ignore him. 

It starts slowly, not saying hello when he gets home from school or goodbye when he’s leaving. But it builds. His mother doesn’t pack lunch for him anymore, his dad stops asking him about his grades, they don’t even look him in the eye anymore. One night, Zayn comes downstairs to check on dinner and his family is already eating, his usual place hasn’t been set and no one looks at him.

The next day Zayn is at home alone, his parents having taken the girls to the amusements park. One minute he’s by himself in the kitchen eating cereal, playing music to try to drown out the silence in his house. The next there’s a sharp but quiet popping noise and three boys around his age are crowding around his refrigerator. Two of them are looking around dazed, like there are spots dancing across their eyes and while they try to recover, the third boy turns to look at Zayn, sharp gray blue eyes, windswept cinnamon hair and mischievous smile.

“You’re Zayn, right?” he questions, though his tone indicates that he already knows the answer.

Zayn just nods. He’s a bit in shock because he didn’t think there were people like him. Not that he hadn’t thought about it, longed for it, prayed for it. He just didn’t think he would be that lucky.

The boy’s grin widens, looks less mischievous and more excited, “I’m Louis, this is Harry, and this is Liam.” He gesture to the lanky boy with wild curly hair and even wilder green eyes and the boy with light brown side bangs and puppy dog brown eyes respectively. “We would like to recruit you to our team.”

“You want me to come with you?” Zayn asks skeptically. 

Curly boy grins, “Pretty much mate, it’s not so sketchy, it’s a school really. We found your profile in the potentials file in the dean’s office after we broke in. Wanted to personally recruit you to our team before anyone else had the chance.”

There are a million questions flying through his head right now, but one stands in stark relief against the others, “Why would you want me?”

Harry smiles incredulously while Louis laughs and it’s Liam who finally answers, “Mate, you can fly, and you have super strength, why wouldn’t we want you.”

Harry and Liam both put a hand on Louis’ shoulders and the cinnamon haired boy reached a hand out to him. Every reason as to why he shouldn’t go flew through Zayn’s head in that instance. Danny, school, his sisters, the fact that he didn’t know these people at all. But then he looks around at his empty house. He thinks about his family eating dinner last night without him, how his parents haven’t so much as looked at him in a year. He thinks about how alone he feels, all the time, because no one understands what he’s dealing with. 

He doesn’t think much further before he grabs Louis’ hand with his and he blinks awake for what feels like the first time ever in an office that looks like it belongs in a wing at Oxford. The three boys get chewed out by the dean, Simon, it turns out his name is. But since Zayn did come willingly they don’t get much more punishment beyond some volunteer work around the school. They grin at Zayn as they leave and Zayn feels a natural pull to follow them. 

He gets the whole story that night. He’s not a superhero it turns out, but Simon carefully avoids the word mutant as well. There’s really not a word for what they are, and even though it is partly genetics, it isn’t a mutation but something that has been around for thousands of years. 

He’s welcomed to the school at the end of it all, and Simon offers to get his stuff from his house before he can even ask. He ends up bunking with Louis, being closest in age, and the boy gives him a good night and a hug before Zayn falls asleep dreaming of piercing ice blue eyes. 

Now, Zayn is twenty years old. And he’s an amalgamation of all his past ages. He’s that wondrous five year old, the incredulous ten year old, and that lonely thirteen year old, all wrapped up in a slightly wiser, stronger, more aware man. A man who, as he reaches to hand the blond stranger on the sidewalk the phone he had dropped, feels all of the wind that follows him around like a best friend leave him so fast that he’s left feeling breathless. All at the sight of eyes that were every shade of blue that Zayn has ever dreamed of.


End file.
